Issue: International environmental
governance
Indicator: Number of parties to multilateral environmental agreements

A number of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have been
negotiated and adopted to address environmental issues of global significance.
The MEAs are important frameworks for global environmental governance,
and the number of countries and regional organizations that have ratified
an MEA is an indication of political will to address the issue concerned.

Ratification of the selected agreements has steadily grown over time
(Figure 18), with conventions such as CITES, CBD, World Heritage, UNFCCC
(excluding the Kyoto Protocol) and Vienna (including the Montreal Protocol)
approaching the maximum possible number of parties. Taking an overview
of the ratification of the 13 MEAs, the proportion of maximum possible
ratifications has increased in all regions. Europe, for example, has
reached a ratification rate of 78 per cent of the maximum possible if
all countries ratified all the MEAs. The rate stands at 71 per cent
for the world as a whole (Table 2).

Figure
18: Number of parties to multilateral environmental agreements,
1971–2003

Table 2: Number of parties
to multilateral environmental agreements, by region*

Region
(no. of countries)

CBD

CMS

CITES

World
Heritage

Kyoto

Vienna/
Montreal

Ramsar

PIC

POPs

UNCCD

UNCLOS

UNFCCC

Basel

Sum
of ratifications of all 13 MEAs

Potential
maximum (no.of countries x13)

Overall
% ratified (of possible maximum)

Africa
(53)

52

27

51

45

23

51

38

13

11

53

38

52

37

491

689

71

Asia
and the Pacific (45)

44

9

28

39

33

41

23

8

8

44

33

44

33

387

585

56

Europe**
(49)

46

36

44

48

34

46

46

15

11

46

35

46

46

499

637

78

LAC
(34)

32

7

32

31

27

33

25

6

7

33

27

33

30

323

442

73

West
Asia (12)

10

3

7

11

1

10

0

5

2

2

9

10

10

80

156

51

North
America (2)

1

0

2

2

1

2

2

1

1

2

0

2

1

17

26

65

Global
(195)

185

82

164

176

119

183

134

48

40

180

142

187

157

1
797

2
535

71

*
Data on the number of parties as of December 2003. **Including
the European Community as a separate party.
Source: see Annex